It’s a cool day at the local fair, sunny with overcast and a decent enough breeze to keep the sweat from standing in long lines at bay. The carnival was on the first leg of its summer-long tour, meaning everyone here and abroad could enjoy rides and games, a beer tent, tractor pulls, along with everything else included on the moderately-priced ticket. An inundation of unfamiliar faces flooded the town that was used to mostly seeing the same meager few thousand over and over.

The big draw this year was a surprise addition to the venue, a kite show, which could easily be seen from anywhere in and beyond town, but was best seen from directly underneath. From the complex patterns to the unique frames, all the way to the elaborate tails and the near-invisible fly-lines, people were transfixed by the array of designs gliding perpetually overhead. Even I, a local who took the fair for granted and barely ever went, had to see this display of things never seen before. Locked in place in the sky, almost still, it had an ethereal vibe that made me uncomfortable yet kept me fascinated.

I heard a scream and joined the heads that turned towards a panicking family. Not to say I’d take a bullet for these people, but I’ll do what I can to help if I can. The young couple were looking for one of their children, a toddler apparently, while a baby cried in a stroller. If you have kids, you know the type of screech that is brought on by pure terror, and this little girl was making it loud and clear. I heard through the crowd that someone had called the police, so with that, I went back to moving through the fair. I’d keep my eye out, but standing there gawking like half the crowd was still doing wasn’t going to help anyone.

About an hour later I heard another incident took place. A four-year old disappeared, and within minutes, the police presence more than doubled. Hopefully the kids had just wandered off, but if not, I know a lot of guys and gals who would love to beat the living fuck out of a kidnapper, myself included. People were starting to leave for fear of what could be happening, but they were replaced by more who passively read about it on social media before taking their chances anyway. Mankind’s persistent notion that ‘it only happens to someone else’ was in high gear, especially after a long drive to the middle of nowhere.

I figured I’d kill time looking up at the kites since there were a lot of eyes looking for a lot of things. The sun was well past noon position, so there would only be a few hours left before they’d be drawn in for the night. I didn’t realize how locked in I was on the formation until something whipped by my face too fast to actually see. I heard it though, like something with wings beating fast enough to carry it at that speed. I turned my head to follow it, but was too slow and only saw something be yanked into the sky. A couple looked to their feet, then frantically around them before starting to panic, like the first family that lost a child today.

I looked back up. Instead of looking at the whole of the kites’ formation I began darting my eyes to each one as quickly as I could. It was hard to focus; the big picture in their communal pattern drew the eye away from the threads and towards the tapestry. Something reeked about the situation now. Instincts warned me to run but curiosity forced me to stay. Hidden there, beyond the canopy of wonders, something moved out of synch with the rest. It paused as it passed other kites, moving in a way that had nothing to do with the wind and more like it was driven by sentience. I was able to spot the tail and followed it, where so high up, what could only be seen as a dot could only be the missing child. As if it read my mind, it darted away from the whole to out of town where there as farmland forever.

Everyone saw it, and while a lot of people scrambled for their vehicles to follow, I started to run. Only a few trucks were able to peel out of the fairgrounds before I made it to the highway, but instead of heading up the road, I cut through the backyards of the adjacent block. I am not a runner. Be it the adrenaline or the cause, there was no sweat and I was not getting tired. I knew I was going to collapse, then feel this for days, but hopefully not before this gets resolved. This was an awful scenario that was nightmarish when lived and I just wanted it to stop. I was expecting a modified drone, but was also considering alien abduction.

I’d made it to farmland and was sliding down a particularly steep cornfield when I was forced to consider the river ahead. Whatever took the child was fading into the distance, but I could see it was beginning to descend. Without slowing for a second, I kicked off the bank with all I had and found myself launched out over the water. The toe of my shoe skipped across the clear surface before I landed hard on the other side and leaned deeper into the sprint. The harder I pushed with each footfall, the longer I spent in the air just above the ground until the next.

I crossed into the woods, where I saw a convoy of other fairgoers on the same chase as me. I’m pretty sure the speed limit was 80 on that road, and while surely, they were speeding, I was keeping up. It was a day for impossibilities, so I decided to push my luck and instead of propelling myself forward, I decided to go up. Crashing through the canopy’s branches, I found myself coasting along the treetops. I instinctively leaned into the winds, where my speed increased to well beyond what I was running.

Even though I lost track of the UFO, I was sure it landed in an old abandoned barn I knew well from smoking joints in it with friends back in my twenties. The main door was closed as it had been for decades and I tilted so I could circle around to the back. The rusted, long-dead hay conveyor had been knocked to the ground, making the opening to the upper loft evermore foreboding. I kept back when the trucks and cars starting pulling into the overgrown yard. I didn’t need anyone thinking I had anything to do with this, and being seen flying would be tough to explain without being shot at.

As soon as the first guy put his hand on the doorhandle, something moved in the loft, violently enough to shake the whole barn. Everyone stood back and those with guns trained them on both the door and the upper opening. Quickly enough to have the shots taken miss, something large emerged too fast to see until it stopped. It was a kite, massive, at least twenty feet longways. The sail looked as though it were made of stretched leather, but not, because it was actually skin. Large eyes scattered across the surface gave us each undivided attention. The tail looked as though it were a thousand-long string of mismatched vertebrae, with human hands of every flesh tone spread evenly by the foot along the span.

I was frozen in horror by the abomination and it knew it. The hayloft of yore burst like a roused belfry packed with bats out of hell. A host of smaller kites, folded out of body parts swarmed the townsfolk. As I looked at them, I realized not what, but who they were made of, and by the moment, their grotesque features were changing to fit in perfectly with the rest floating passively over the fair. This was a sick, living nightmare, the crux of which swept its tail across the property, snatching up people. The myriad of hands stretched and bent them into more kites. I’d seen enough.

On the second sweep I realized the wing beats I’d heard earlier was the passing of the hands by me when it snatched the first child. I caught one on its way by and the entire spine halted when the slack caught up to my grasp. With a harsh yank, I twisted to a full circled to harness the momentum to whip the monster clear through the roof of the barn. Rotten splinters scattered into the sky and when the dust settled, I was able to see the kite torn by all the dead farm equipment it landed on. The sail was torn, although healing at a rate that could be seen with the naked eye.

The people who chased it with me closed in and began shooting the thing, hacking at the frame to ensure its demise. Around me the smaller ones scattered to the winds, so I picked one to start with and would go from there. My disgust was what drove the next act, a burst of hot light from my eyes that zeroed in on the target and sent it smouldering back towards earth. From then on, every one of them looked more and more like a stunning kite like those back at the fair, which, from my vantage point, could see were still there as they’d been all along. I was glad they hadn’t descended on the crowds to make matters that much worse.

The younglings were either dead or gone, and the plan was to head back to the flock and destroy them all to free the remains of those they were from this twisted blasphemy. I’d just gotten to the lot and was about to expose my new abilities to everyone in the name of ending this horror, when I noticed they all lost their colour at the same time. One by one, then by twos, then tens, they crumbled into pale grey dust that didn’t even have the chance to touch the ground before it was carried away by the breeze, too fine to even see. I passed over the barn to where only an outline of the hellkite could be seen, written in fine ash. They told me that after enough abuse, it just died.

We wondered how much to tell the others of what we saw, and decided to keep the secret ours until we knew more. Who knew how many more of these, of me, had been activated, and by what, let alone why?

This is based on a dream from May 18, 2022 during a nap on my lunch break.

Hellkite II: Parabolic